


5 Kisses McCoy Received and 1 Kiss He Gave

by JiM



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: 5 Times, Multi, Platonic Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-08
Updated: 2013-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-31 20:27:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1036032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JiM/pseuds/JiM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What it says on the label.</p>
            </blockquote>





	5 Kisses McCoy Received and 1 Kiss He Gave

**Author's Note:**

> This has been posted elsewhere previously.

**#5 and #4**

They weren’t even in a battle when Uhura’s console blew up. It had been two weeks since they had seen any kind of action. It was just a stupid engineering failure; it could have happened to anyone, at any time, on any shift. Unfortunately, it happened to the chief communications officer during the Alpha shift. 

The gout of flame seared her right cheek, narrowly missing her eyeball and nearly cooking her ear. Fortunately, McCoy and Chapel had begun working on her before the damaged flesh was even cool. They contained the damage, rescued the delicate nerves, and rebuilt her sinus and the graceful curve of her ear. Spock had arrived after all the painstaking work had been done and held her hand while she lay under the dermal regenerators, bringing her down into a light healing trance with him.

When she awakened, she had silently surveyed the ruin done to her hair and eyebrow and the harlequin-like patches of pale new skin across the right side of her face and throat. McCoy watched her fingertips lightly skim the high arch of her cheekbone, then touch the pinkish lobe of her right ear.

“It’ll take about 6 months for the new skin to take on its proper pigmentation,” McCoy said gruffly.

She had merely nodded, lips a tight, thin line. He knew she wasn’t a woman driven by vanity, but anyone would be shocked by the mess the fire had made of her stunning beauty. At least Spock would support her throughout the cosmetic healing process.

“Thank you, Doctor,” she said, her voice low and clipped. “It’s not important. After all, I still have a face, right?” Her smile was more a grimace, but that might have been the pulling of the tender new skin.

Still, that small, pained expression stuck with him. Sometime later that day, he had wandered down to the bioscience lab and had a chat with a few of the crew there.

Three days later, they had made space dock at Starbase 22. He and Jim were having a quiet drink in a relatively calm bar, watching the mating antics of their crewmembers and chatting about nothing important.

Nyota Uhura had walked into the bar, stopped and scanned the place before her eyes rested on McCoy. Then she strode purposefully toward him, ignoring the silence she left in her wake as her fellow crewmembers noticed her. 

She had used her time at the starbase to get a striking new short hairstyle to disguise the loss of half of her long tresses. He could tell, as she came closer, that she had also had her right ear re-pierced. Delicate strands of gold fell from her new ear-rings almost to her shoulders. But what he noticed most of all, when she came to stand directly in front of him, was the flawlessness of her complexion.

A slight smile on her face, she took his hand and gently urged him to his feet. While Jim and a good portion of the crew stared in fascination, she drew McCoy into her arms and kissed him.

Her lips were warm and moist. Her tongue lightly stroked against his mouth to slip inside and caress him. Her beautiful breasts rubbed against his chest as she moved in his arms, a subtle perfume wreathing him as her hands stroked the back of his neck. She was a cool flame in his arms and he kissed her back with all the affection and painless lust he felt for her.

When they drew back from the kiss, there was applause and whistling from their crew and silent astonishment from Jim. McCoy drew one finger gently down her unblemished right cheek, almost unable to feel where the custom-designed make-up began. His lab rats had done exactly what he had told them to and the results were more than adequate, he judged. Apparently, so did Uhura.

“Thank you, Doctor,” she said with an impish smile as she stepped away.

He knew he was blushing and about to start grinning like a fool. 

“You’re quite welcome, Lieutenant.”

“I don’t get one?” Kirk asked plaintively.

“Shut up, Jim,” he and Uhura chorused, causing merriment to reign.

The hubbub died down as their audience noticed Commander Spock standing behind Uhura, impassively watching her passionate clinch with the ship’s CMO. Before McCoy could even catch his breath or wonder if he were about to be beaten to hell, Uhura winked and stepped out of the way.

“I, too, wish to thank you, Doctor,” Spock said, extending a hand.

Astonished at the gesture, McCoy reached for it, intending to shake it. Instead, Spock wrapped his long, warm fingers around McCoy’s wrist, locking their hands together in a clasp. Then he loosened his grip, letting their palms slip slowly past one another.

McCoy noticed the silkiness of the skin against his, the encompassing heat wherever he was touched. Spock’s fingertips stroked down the center of his palm so slowly that it caused shivers of pleasure to run down his spine. Finally, Spock’s middle and index fingers were gliding against his own, the movement so sensual that McCoy could feel himself blushing again. The pads of their fingers lingered as Spock flexed his fingers upward, prolonging the contact as he met McCoy’s gaze. If the doctor didn’t know better, he would swear on his last bottle that the Vulcan was smiling, even if his lips hadn’t so much as quivered.

“Nyota and I are both in your debt.” 

With that, Spock tipped his hand down, allowing McCoy’s hand to fall to his side. Lips and fingers tingling, cheeks hot and breath short, McCoy watched the first officer and his lady leave the now-silent bar.

“What the hell was that about, Bones?” Jim demanded. “Since when does Uhura kiss you like that?”

McCoy just shook his head, probably looking as dazed as he felt.

“Hell, since when does _Spock_ kiss you like that?”

Dropping back into his seat, McCoy stared at Jim. “Huh?”

“Oh, Bones…,” Jim just smirked at him. “You’re going to have to start paying better attention if you ever want to get laid out here.” 

Then he proceeded to share all the details of Vulcan kisses, Andorian nose-touching and Orionic cheek-rubbing and a few more species that he claimed to have dated over his varied career. Through it all, McCoy just grinned a little, occasionally touching his lips with his fingers.

 

**#3 and #2**

What he wanted to say to Chekhov was, “Twenty is too damned young to be a father. Trust me, I know.” 

A close second piling up behind his gritted teeth was aimed at the equally young mother lying on his bio-bed; “Haven’t the two of you ever heard of birth control?!” 

A third, much more ridiculous statement that he didn’t even want to consider was, “I’m CMO, not a damned OB-GYN!”

What he did say was, “Congratulations, Ensign Polyanov, you’re pregnant.”

So taken up with not shouting at them like an outraged Victorian father, he didn’t manage to dodge the beaming Russian before being seized in a strong grip. A smacking kiss to his left cheek, then one to his right, a stream of incomprehensibly happy babble wrapping around them both before Chekov let go of him and turned back to the young woman smiling tearily on the bed.

As the two youngsters cuddled and cooed, he found himself almost smiling. What the hell – he liked babies. He had eight months to read up on obstetrics.

**#1**

He was used to patients dying in surgery; it was a given in his field. He didn’t like it, no doctor did. But he was prepared for it. What he had not been prepared for was his surgical nurse passing him a laser-scalpel and reaching for the next instrument he would need, then dropping like a bag of hammers to the floor.

The next few minutes had been chaotic as he tried to tend to the appendectomy he had on the table and get a team in to see to the unconscious Nurse S’e’eel. As soon as he could safely pass off his surgical patient for closing and post-surgical care, he had gone to check on S’e’eel. One look at M’Benga and Chapel’s faces and he knew. The young nurse was dead on the table in Surgical Bay #2, her thorax still open and gleaming wetly under the lights.

Solemnly, M’Benga pointed out the site of the aneurysm, right at the junction of the two main arteries into her heart. There was pale purplish blood everywhere, except for the site where it had been suctioned away. She had bled out before they could even isolate the site of the bleed.

“Looks like a congenital defect,” was all McCoy had to offer. 

It didn’t make it any easier. M’Benga and Chapel and he had shared a silent drink in his office. When the other doctor had gotten up to leave, his jaw locked grimly, McCoy had been moved to say, “Geoff, I’ll do the post mortem. You go off-duty.”

M’Benga had given him a grateful look and nodded. Then he left without a word.

Chapel finished the last swallow of her drink and stood up. “Thanks, Len. For the drink and for M’Benga.”

He nodded, staring into his glass. M’Benga and S’e’eel had been a superb surgical team, almost telepathic in their ability to anticipate a patient’s needs. He and Geoff had even had a friendly debate over whose nurse was better. They had swapped nurses for a week to compare paragons. Today had been McCoy’s third day with S’e’eel and he had had to admit that she was a superb medical professional. He had been enjoying working with her.

There was a short silence and then McCoy looked up. “Chris? If it were you on that table, I wouldn’t be able to do it, either.”

She gave him a watery smile, then came quickly around the desk to him. He tucked his face against her breast for a moment, letting himself be comforted like a small boy, her arms wrapped around his shoulders.

She bent and pressed a gentle kiss to his head. Then she squeezed him, let go and walked crisply out of his office.

 

**+1**

After the post-mortem, McCoy cleaned up Surgical Bay #2 on his own, silently turning away all offers of help from beta or early gamma shift workers who had heard about the loss of one of their own. All the time he mopped and wiped and disinfected, S’e’eel’s body lay silently on the table. He circled it again and again, putting instruments away and gathering up used and useless medical debris for disposal.

He had already resealed the chest cavity after removing, inspecting and replacing all of her organs. A darkened purple Y marred her torso, so he pulled a drape up almost to her chin. 

S’e’eel told him that she came from a family of nurses. He had, perhaps with a touch of arrogance, demanded to know why such a fine healer had become a nurse instead of a doctor.

“We have always been nurses, the men and women of my clan,” she told him seriously. “Doctors diagnose and treat and this is a good thing. But we, we are nurses. We comfort, we cajole, we cheer or bully, as each patient needs. We travel the road to recovery or death with our patients, each step of the way.”

The serene gravity with which she spoke echoed his own sense of calling to be a doctor. M’Benga had told him that she treated each of her patients as if she or he were her only concern in the universe. Yet off-duty, he claimed that she had a terrific sense of fun and was able to completely step away from her work, enjoying many hobbies and not a few love affairs.

He sighed and prepared himself for an influx of S’e’eel’s stricken friends and lovers over the next few days. Finally, he stopped beside the table and looked at her.

She didn’t look like she was sleeping; she looked dead. Something indefinable was gone and even the look of peace on her face couldn’t compensate for the sense of her loss. He had no idea what the people of her clan did when a loved one died. So he murmured words he had heard his grandmother say more than once.

“Go with God, darling.” Then he leaned over and kissed her cold, lavender cheek.


End file.
